


Just Who Are You?

by sambethe



Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:53:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9356519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sambethe/pseuds/sambethe
Summary: We know what we know. Until we don’t.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not betad, but edited. Pure spec on Dorothy’s background.

It’s a terrible thing to know who you are.

Scratch that.

It’s a terrible thing to think you know who you are. To think there is a fundamental truth to who you are, to what makes you _you_ , only to find it’s all a jumbled mess. That a piece to the puzzle was pulled only to be put back in at a 45-degree angle from where it was meant to be.

That you can be twelve and find out the two people who you thought you were made up of, aren’t.

Dorothy wonders if it wouldn’t have been easier to have known from the start. Wonders if it would have been easier to have never known. Wonders if they ever meant to tell her, if not for a science class experiment on blood types accidentally revealing the truth.

That you can be fifteen and find out that no matter how hard you pretend otherwise, you are angry. Angry at the woman who left you, angry despite the fact they tell you she was barely more than a girl herself. Angry at the parents who may have meant well, but who still lied.

Dorothy knows she wants more, wants to be more, wants to feel more, but she doesn’t know how. Instead she starts staying out too late, hanging out with people far too old. She lies and though she knows Em and Henry see the truth, she doesn’t stop.

That you can be seventeen and so sure about someone. About the future you tell one another of, a future lived anywhere but in the flat, brown desolation of center-of-nowhere-Kansas. That he leaves in the dead of night and there’s a state trooper on the Gale’s doorstep shouldn’t surprise her. Who ever stays? Who ever is who they say they are?

It is that thought that stops Dorothy, a third of the way through a bottle of whiskey out in the middle of the cornfield behind her parents’ house. She can see Henry’s face as he attempts to answer the officer’s questions, attempts to curb his accent as much as possible to not invite other questions. She can see Em nervously wipe down plates that don’t need drying as Dorothy gives stilted answers to the officer.

She knows then who stays despite any of the shit she throws at them.

That you can be nineteen and trying to get your act together. Trying to be a student nurse and a daughter and a friend, but you’re pretty sure you are only really good at being one of those things.

There’s a letter addressed to her sitting on the kitchen table when she gets home from her shift. The return address is a rural road on the outskirts of the next town over. Dorothy thumbs the seal but doesn’t open it.

“As best I can tell, she hasn’t been there long,” her mother offers before turning back to the pot on the stove, stirring whatever sauce it is she’s making.

Dorothy debates tossing it out unopened, stalks off to her room leaving it there in the kitchen only to storm back in ten minutes later and tear at the seal. It doesn’t offer much, just her name – Karen – and the fact that she’s moved nearby. Offers to meet Dorothy in town, if she likes. Leaves a phone number and says she can call or text.

She doesn’t.

She avoids dealing with the letter for weeks. Goes to class, goes to work, goes home, sometimes goes to Ryan’s, but doesn’t text. Doesn’t call.

Instead she leaves work on the afternoon of her birthday, not even telling Ryan what day it is despite his offer of dinner, and drives out to Karen’s, to her mother’s. But she can’t even get out of her truck.

All of which means she’s twenty and following a yellow-bricked road in a land that makes no real sense with a man who doesn’t know who he is. Because of course she is.

It’s enough irony to choke a horse.

And, yet.

And yet, it’s the first thing that’s felt right in eight years. Even when he scares her. Even when she scares herself. She wanted to be more, she asked to be more.

She’s pretty sure this isn’t what she meant. 

But then Lucas tips his chin, encouraging her to continue down the path, despite what they know of the Wizard. Despite not knowing what Lucas did to cross him. Dorothy shoulders her pack and heads off, knowing he’s two steps behind, almost like he’s been shadowing her since forever.


End file.
